If you're on Neocities, over the past few days I'm sure you have noticed the huge shitstorm spawning from a certain (now deleted) website which promised to shine light on lesser known sites. I haven't written a longer blog post in a while so I figured now would be a perfect time to write one on the topic because I have a lot to say, but I didn't want to add fuel to the fire by commenting while it was happening.
For context, there was an anonymous person who found a sort of "exploit" in Neocities code and how it handled top websites. Basically, your place on the front page was determined by your follower-to-following ratio. So in theory, if you were able to recieve a large amount of followers despite following nobody, you would be pushed to the top of the list. This means mutuals were not counted towards your placement on the front page. At least that's how I believe it worked, I didn't really care to look into it. This person had the idea to use this to advantage of others, which sounds like a good idea on paper... until it was actually put into motion.
Basically, this person (or people? I think it was a few running the website) decided to create a website similar to the now-dead Districts which would list sites and their buttons. Only, the requirement for it was that you had to have under a certain amount of followers/views based on how long your website has existed.
The intention was to promote lesser known and/or obscure websites by giving them a front-and-center place on the front page. The list was sorted by least-to-most views. This sounded a wonderful idea, but the way this webmaster handled it was... bad, to say the least.
Now, I don't really know much about the start of this website, I really only heard about it until later on when people were making a fuss about it. All I know is that the webmaster mislead people with very vague rules about join requirements causing people to leave en-mass, in turn, the webmaster would get really aggressive and defensive, causing even more people to leave because - why would a site with such a welcoming vibe and helpful intent be so rude to anyone who no longer wanted to be a part of it? You'd think they'd be understanding, since not everyone wants eyes on their website. Yeah, I'm also pretty sure a lot of people had their website listed without their permission; at least that's what I understood.
Unfortunately the site and all of the comments on it's profile are completely gone so I cannot fact check any of this, so take it with a grain of salt from someone who only witnessed from the sidelines during the final 2 or so days of the project.
So, what's the big deal? Well, nothing really. The site is gone and it didn't really cause any harm to the community aside from some arguments where people were publically flinging shit at eachother over opposing opinions.
The main issue stemmed from the way this person was treating anyone who was or wasn't listed on the site. Basically, one of the rules was that you weren't allowed to be listed if you (and I quote) "support someone who is against the project." Which is quite literally just a DNI (or a "Do Not Interact" list for those who luckily have not been exposed to social media culture). Very odd coming from someone with a paragraph on their site about being against corporate social media, followers, and numbers... yet were obsessed with numbers themselves?
Side note, for some reason this person also made the argument that they were "off social media longer than probably anybody else here" which is a hilarious thing to bring up.
Anyway, may I remind you that not everyone with a high view/follower count on Neocities is even notable and were either shouted out by a larger face online, or host helpful tools that benefit people without a website, and not everyone with a low view count is completely unknown to the community.
Neocities view counts are notoriously broken; a lot of websites will have 10x the amount of view counts on their site profile than they have on their actual website hit-counters which count actual individuals. No one really knows how the Neocities view count system works, other than the fact it's broken and counts bot crawls leading to highly inflated numbers. Followers, too. Some people have/have had their site profiles disabled leading to a higher place on the websites list despite not having many (if any) followers.
The way this person was handling the idea of "lesser known websites" was flawed; however, it was not their fault because there really is no other way to determine what counts as an "obscure" website without relying on numbers. Neocities is broken and it will always be broken until Kyle decides to fix it.
Now, I just want to take a moment to talk about the bigger picture here; the main reason why projects like this are a bad idea. Cabbagesorter made a good point on this (which I will credit them for making, assuming they don't have a problem with it) which I will paraphrase. There is already a feature built into Neocities for browsing lesser known websites, multiple even. People who don't bother to look at the "recently updated" section of Neocities won't care to look at a massive button wall of websites that are mostly pretty empty. And there actually aren't even that many "underrated sites". On Neocities, numbers don't reflect the amount of people interacting with your content.
Most traffic you'll recieve on your website aren't even from other people who use Neocities. It's not followers, or views. It's messages in your Guestbook and comments, people who go out of their way to message and e-mail you to become your friend, trading links and graphics. Looking at your website hit counter and seeing the different parts of the world your website has been viewed at. It provides a much more fulfilling feeling than a number go up.
A lot of the people on the front page barely interact with anyone, myself included. So despite having many followers, what does it even mean if they're not going to interact with others? Why focus on the numbers when the numbers don't determine who is going to look at your website in the first place?
Yes, it might drive someone to click on it because it's in the front page, but if you don't have content, people won't spend time looking around your website and coming back for updates.
Would you rather someone go window shopping, or actually take a look inside for content?
This brings me to another point, and this might be hard to hear for some but... I think it's your own fault if your website isn't getting attention. Just hear me out.
I think everyone knows at this point that Neocities isn't social media and there isn't an algorhythm or content tailored specifically to your tastes. Everyone on Neocities is shown the same websites, and its up to you to browse through it and find ones you like.
If you're browsing Neocities in the first place, you're there to see websites. You WILL spend time on the websites you like, and you will spend time looking for content you enjoy. It is quite literally like browsing through a library and finding that one book that speaks to you. Of course there are the books on the first shelf you see when you walk in, but you're not there for that. You might check it out, yes, but you're mainly there to find a book that you'll enjoy reading.
If you're only on Neocities to look at what's trendy, why are you here? People on the front page didn't ask to be on the front page. A lot of the time it was pure luck. Faux for example is simply a SEL fanpage that became very well known because of Youtube videos made on it, under the impression it was an ARG when in reality it was just some guy's fanproject.
Now, back to my point. Considering people aren't on Neocities to see popular websites, why does it matter if your website is on the front page or not?
I understand wanting to be on the spotlight to have a better chance at your art getting attention, but does that really matter if most of the people looking at it don't even really care?
For me, I'm on the front page and honestly I hate being there. I got there because of luck, and a lot of the attention I recieve means nothing to me because it's from people who don't care to listen to what I have to say or get to know me as a person. They look at the pretty graphics on my website, and that's it. They comment something like "your website is so cute" which I've heard a million times and then they move on with their day without ever returning because they weren't really interested in it in the first place.
I don't think anyone wants this. It doesn't matter your position on the front page or in Neocities' vast site "catalogue" because people who don't care about what you do WON'T CARE.
So, how's that your fault? Well, if your main goal for your website is views and you create things with the intention of getting attention (yet failing to do so) tells me that you don't offer any content on your website.
I think what a lot of people fail to realize is that... your website isn't content on it's own. Your website HOSTS content that you make. If you create a website and put nothing on it besides some graphics you found on Gifcities and maybe a small bio which is just bulletpoints of your interests, there's really nothing there that would entice anyone to look at it.
Even if you cheesed the system to put your website on the front page, if it didn't have content, no one would interact with it and no one would care, so what's the point?
Neocities isn't social media, content will not be fed to you just as your content will not be fed to other people. Creating things to catch peoples attention doesn't work here. People aren't here to consume shortform content when they're waiting for their food to warm up in the microwave, or they're about to hit the hay, which is a huge reason a lot of people happen to waste so much time on social media. It's an idle activity they do when they have nothing else to do.
Your website is not content that should be consumed in bite-sized pieces. (In fact, it's a couple of megabites at least!)
But I'm just talking in circles now, no?
The last thing I have to say is this; garnering a small community of people who enjoy your website is not hard. We're all here to look at personal websites and form small communities based off niche interests. If you go out of your way to comment on other peoples Guestbook and make friends, I promise it will be returned to you.